Oh you’ll get a job. No one graduates college and never works again. The question is will you get a career with a future doing something you like or will you be struggling to land any j-o-b that will pay the bills. The problem is that too many college students spend 4 years studying whatever strikes their fancy and THEN worry about what kind of job they will land. They will be competing against kids who know what they wanted to do freshman year and have summer internships in that field.
I was the same way. I graduated with a degree in civil engineer but by the time I graduated, I knew I hated it. Now an engineering degree helps getting into jobs in computers or finance because its quantitative. I think it hurts a little if I want a job in sales or marketing because it paints me as a “numbers guy”.
Don’t listen to people who tell you that college grades and major don’t matter. They do. The only jobs where this doesn’t matter are dead end jobs that someone with any degree can do. Maybe it won’t matter in seven years if you are a star performer at your company, but the days of just strolling out of your dorm with any degree and into some tech job paying $45000 out of college are over.
My thoughts on the matter are you either need:
A degree close enough to a field that’s hot so that the rest doesn’t matter
In my office, which has an exceptional record for people moving into positions of great responsibility and good pay, there are folks who studied international relations (like me), English, journalism, psychology, economics, environmental studies, poli sci, history, and probably a bunch of other liberal arts fields that I don’t know of. My professional acquantances are pretty much all in similar positions. The only thing that mattered is that we had college (or advanced) degrees.
Again, I repeat what I said earlier: majors don’t matter very much unless you are going into fields that relate to science, engineering, technology, medicine, and the like. Hell, I know one accountant who majored in American studies (but I wouldn’t recommend that course of study if you’re serious about that profession!).
Plus, I took it from the OP that he wasn’t really interested in a tech job, anyways, because he said that he was most interested in politics, ethics, psychology, and related fields. If that’s true, there’s no reason to worry about his major. But I do completely agree with the importance of being a good student with accomplishments, and interships are also a great use of a student’s time.
I’m just speaking from experience. My undergrad grades weren’t the greatest and that immediately excluded me from certain jobs that I managed to land interviews for due to connections of one kind or another - investment banks, Fortune 500 management programs, top management consulting firms. These companies tend to require very high academic performance. In many ways, it might have been better for me to study something like poly sci or marketing instead of engineering which I hated.
I’m not saying liberal arts is a bad major. It just seems that quite often, people I know who studied liberal arts find themselves having to explain it to an interviewer. You want to hear “wow…that’s a tough major” or like I heard in an interview the other day “well…as an MBA with an engineering degree, I’m sure you are well versed in convexity of bond durations” (uh…if there are no follow up questions…yes I am). you don’t want to hear “hmm…we don’t have too many of them here”.
(uh…if there are no follow up questions…yes I am). you don’t want to hear “hmm…we don’t have too many of them here”.